1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image reading apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are demands for converting a medium, such as a single sheet of photo (hereinafter, single photo), which may be a silver halide photo photographed with a film camera and obtained through development and printing or a printed photo printed based on image data, or a photo album (album) composed of a plurality of photos, into image data to store and manage the image data on a recording medium such as a hard disk or a cloud computing system. Generally, the medium is read to generate the image data, with an image reading apparatus (a flatbed scanner, a scanner with an ADF (Auto Document Feeder) (hereinafter, ADF scanner), an overhead scanner, a handy scanner, and a digital camera).
In the flatbed scanner, one or more single photos or an area including at least a photo to be read in the photo album is put on a platen glass, and an image capturing unit captures, through the platen glass, the image of a surface to be read on the side of the platen glass. The ADF scanner can continuously capture images of a plurality of single photos by the image capturing unit. In the overhead scanner (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-268323) or digital camera, one or more single photos or an area including at least a photo to be read in the photo album are/is arranged or placed in a photographed area of an image capturing unit. Then, the image capturing unit captures the image of a surface to be read on the side facing the image capturing unit. For the handy scanner (see U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0142371), to capture the image of the single photo or the entire area of one photo in the photo album using the image capturing unit, the handy scanner is moved while being in contact with the single photo or the photo album.
There are demands for reducing damage on the medium, easily converting the image on the medium into image data, and generating image data with high image quality. In the case of flatbed scanner, the ADF scanner, and the over head scanner, it is necessary to bring the medium to an installation place of the scanner and to arrange or devise the medium so that the image capturing unit can capture the image of the medium. For example, in the case of the ADF scanner, it is necessary to take out a photo once from the photo album, when converting the photo taken out from the photo album into image data. Particularly, in the case of a photo album in which photos are fixed with an adhesive agent, there are problems such that the photo is damaged when removing the photo, and that an adhesive force of the adhesive agent decreases due to the removal, which causes difficulty in fixing the photo again on the photo album.
In the ADF scanner, the photo is carried to the image capturing unit by a carriage roller, which results in a problem of damaging the photo. Similarly, the handy scanner has a problem of damaging the medium because the handy scanner contacts the medium.
In the handy scanner, when the single photo is converted into image data, the photo needs to be held by hand not to be moved. Because it is necessary to move the handy scanner side, the user has quite many bothersome processes to do. Further, because the user moves the handy scanner with respect to the medium, the relative speed of the medium and the handy scanner is not constant, which makes it difficult to maintain high quality of the image data generated.
The overhead scanner and the digital camera are apt to be influenced by ambient, because the photo or photo album is exposed to the ambient at the time of capturing an image of or photographing the photo or photo album. A sheet of printing paper (for a silver halide photo) or glossy paper (for a printed photo) has higher reflectivity than plain paper. Thus, ambient light irradiated onto the medium from the outside is reflected on the surface to be read of the medium, and directly enters the image capturing unit. This results in a trouble of reflection of the ambient light due to increase of reflected light of the ambient light which is incident on the image capturing unit. It is therefore difficult to maintain high quality of the image data generated.